Tuesday, 8 September 2015

The Gallery Mess, Chelsea.

Last week a fabulous group of my favourite bloggers and I headed down to The Gallery Mess at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea for dinner with Duke of York Square. It was a great evening full of loads of food and fun!

The Gallery Mess has been on my radar for a while as it's one of the few restaurants in London that allows large groups. I considered it for my birthday last year before deciding to go all out and just join forces with Diego instead. The restaurant is light and bright, with modern features, and the food is handled by London caterers, Rhubarb.

We started with champagne, before sitting down at our table and choosing what to have.

I won't be showing you everyone's meals as the post would be really rather long (let's face it, ain't nobody got time for that), so I'll just show you mine and a couple of others that I got major food envy of. I was joined by Mina, Suze, Frankie, Gary, Poppy, Angie, Fiona, Julie, and two of the fab PRs from Duke of York Square, Caroline and Becky!

While waiting for our starters to arrive we munched on the beautifully fresh bread rolls (is it just me who loves photos of bread!?), slathered in melting butter. I stopped drinking alcohol at this point as I'm trying to be good, so I chose a Lychee non-alcoholic cocktail which was delicious, and so refreshing!

For starters I chose scallops, mainly because I already knew I wanted meat for mains and a big fat dessert, but also because I really love them. If you're a long-term reader you'll likely already know that I order them at any opportunity.

The scallops were delicious, and the perfect light starter to prepare me for the onslaught of carbs about to hit my belly.

I chose the Lavender Honey Glazed Duck for my main meal, it was cooked perfectly and oh so tasty. I really loved the peaches, and the subtle flavour of the lavender worked really well!

Fiona was sat next to me, and I had instant food envy of her gorgeous drool-inducing steak!

Dessert was another incredible course. I chose the Cherry & Almond Crumble which was just perfect! I love crumble, and this one was a brilliant one.

Naturally I also had major food envy of Frankie's chocolat fondant...

And also Fiona's Champagne poached peaches...

If I could have I would have eaten all of those desserts. But I couldn't for it would have all gone straight onto my child-bearing hips. We all spent hours chatting about all things blogging, I do love catching up with blogger friends as they understand everything to do with the blog world.

We had such a wonderful evening at the Gallery Mess, and it was made even more special by some of the gorgeous brands on Duke of York Square gifting us some really thoughtful gifts - you'll be seeing some of them in my upcoming Caribbean posts in early October! I'll be in The Grenadines when the fabulous London Fashion Weekend in Chelsea is taking place, but if you're around you should definitely check it out!

There'll be catwalk shows from some London Fashion Week designers, shopping at exclusive prices from over 150 of the world’s best brands around Duke of York Square, trend presentations, panel discussions with leading experts and the opportunity to chat with the industry’s most revered and respected.

What a lovely evening this must have been! By the way, strangely I too love looking at photos of bread!! I often find that something classic, like a crumble, done properly can be much more satisfying than many twists and I think I'd have chosen the same as you!